


bright eyed

by WattStalf



Series: Naritaverse Months 16-17 [18]
Category: Durarara!!, ヴぁんぷ! - 成田良悟 | Vamp! Series - Narita Ryohgo
Genre: Childhood, Family, Gen, Growing Up, Headcanon, Kind of a crossover, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9399206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: Will you teach me how to do magic tricks?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, I tried not to write this but then I did. They're related in some way, so I went the generic route. After estimating both of their ages and working with the timeline, I figured he could be an older sibling if she was significantly younger. So yeah, this is just a lot of bad headcanon, I'm sorry.

For the early part of his life, Masashi is an only child. It isn't until he's finishing up elementary school that his mother gets pregnant, and then Manami is born. He isn't sure how he feels about having a little sister, and he worries that this means his parents won't have as much time for him and that she will be all anyone can talk about.

At school, his classmates pester him when he says he has a new little sister, and he worries. When he comes home from school, family or friends or neighbors will be there, gushing over little Manami, and all they ever ask him is if he's a good big brother. He doesn't know, and doesn't want to be asked that; he wants to be asked about what he's doing at school or what he wants to be when he grows up.

The latter is his favorite question, one he never gets tired of answering, and he's known the answer and been sure of it for a very long time.

He wants to be just like his father one day, doing important business all day, getting promoted- and he doesn't know what that means at first, but he knows that his father and mother are excited, so he holds onto that word until he  _ does _ understand it- and taking such good care of a family of his own. When he grows up, Masashi wants to be just like his father, with a wife and a child, and maybe two if having a little sister turns out okay for him, but he does want to do one thing differently. He hopes that, when he grows up, he's going to be able to be home a little more often, though he doesn't know how he will manage it, if even his father can't.

But when Manami is born, his father spends a whole week at home with them, and Masashi worries. He can't remember many times his father has taken that much time off, and he worries that he's going to take time for Manami that should be taken for him, that both of his parents aren't going to have time for him anymore. Everyone asks him if he's being a good big brother, but he doesn't know the answer.

~X~

He doesn’t know why his mother gets sad one day. Masashi doesn’t know what changes, but he knows that something must have because, a few years after Manami is born, their mother grows so sad that it is noticeable even to Manami, who is only three years old.

“Why is mommy sad?” she asks him every now and then, eyes wide with her innocent confusion.

“I don’t know,” he replies.

“I’ll ask daddy,” she says once, and he shakes his head.

“No, dad is busy,” he says. “Don’t bother him.”

“Is that why mommy’s sad?”

“Dad’s always been busy. She hasn’t always been sad.” Manami’s questions bother him because he realizes how little he knows, and that he doesn’t have good answers for her sister.

And yet, despite her innocence, she brings up something he’s never considered before. His father has always been busy, but maybe his mother is sad because of that anyway. Maybe she’s finally gotten so tired of it that she’s letting it show, after hiding it for so long. When he observes, he realizes that when his father is home, his parents talk less than they once did, and he realizes that maybe the problem does have something to do with his father.

As he grows older, he gets a few suspicions regarding that, but he never finds out for sure.

~X~

Their mother doesn’t get better and she doesn’t get happier, and she is often so tired that she entrusts Masashi with making sure that his little sister eats dinner and gets to bed on time. When she is old enough to start kindergarten, he’s the one who sees her off for her first day of school, while he starts high school without either of his parents noticing. He remembers a time when people would ask him if he was a good big brother, and now he supposed he must be.

They see an advertisement on TV one day for a magic show, and Manami gets really excited about it. Masashi asks their mother about it, and Manami bounces behind him, waiting for her answer. She is happy when their mother gives them enough money for two tickets, but he can see the disappointment in her eyes when she realizes that their mother has no intention of going with them.

But they have the money for tickets, so he takes Manami, and they're both entranced by all the tricks. It's the happiest he's ever seen his little sister, and this is the first time that he's realized that she carries an air of sadness that doesn't suit a girl in elementary school. She must be learning from their mother, he thinks, and when the show is over, he decides that he's going to try to keep her that happy.

He all but forgets the days when he was worried about her being all anyone cared about.

~X~

“Will you teach me how to do magic tricks?” she asks him, but he doesn’t know anything about magic. The memory of her face at the show drives him to look into it, however, and he buys his first magic kit without telling her. He wants it to be a surprise when he shows her what he’s learned.

Masashi runs through a few different kits, trying out different tricks until he’s got enough mastered that he can do a magic show in their living room, and Manami is so astounded and delighted, even when he makes a few blunders along the way. She is constantly buzzing for the next few days, begging him to teach her all his secrets, and for a while, that is how they spend their time together. He learns whatever magic tricks he can and tries to pass along the secrets to his little sister. She doesn’t usually have the focus required to pull them off perfectly, but she has fun regardless, and she is always happiest when she watches him.

Though it started as something to keep her cheered up, it becomes a hobby that he enjoys quite a bit, and toward the end of high school, he starts entering in contests and becomes a fairly well-known amatuer magician in his area. Manami is always in the front row, eyes just as bright as he remembers from her very first magic show.

~X~

Masashi goes to college, still intent on following in his father’s footsteps, but more determined than ever before to make sure that he does it right. He makes sure to attend school close to home so that he can still spend time with Manami, and he still practices magic in his spare time. When he graduates, he is hired into a company, and he gains popularity with his co-workers, who all want to know the secrets behind his tricks. But he never gives anything away, and only Manami knows how he performs some things.

Unfortunately, work leaves him even less time for visiting home, and sometimes the only chance he has to see her is at the contests he enters. Still, she is always in the front row, watching him with bright, eager eyes. He promises himself that, once he gets good enough footing in his company, he’ll take more time for her, and that he’ll have a family one day, and that Manami will always be welcome at his house, and that he will always have time for everyone in his family.

And then, one night, he is bitten by a vampire.

~X~

Manami stops hearing from her older brother completely, which she thinks is strange. She’s in high school now, and he usually calls her frequently, at least three times a week, sometimes every day. But then it stops completely, and when she tries to call him, she is unable to get through. He has a show coming up, but when she calls him the night before and the morning of, he doesn’t answer, and when she goes to the show at the designated time, it’s announced that he’s been disqualified from the contest because he’s running so late.

Her parents don’t seem concerned, telling her not to worry after him so much and not to pester him. He’s probably just tired of his baby sister tagging along to everything, they tell her, but she knows better. Masashi has always been there for her; he would never abandon her without a word, especially not over something like that.

When she gets a call from his company, saying that they have been trying to reach him for a week and that he hasn’t shown up to work, she finally convinces her parents to file a missing person’s report. Her older brother is never found.

~X~

Masashi knows that he can’t go back home, not as he is, and he stays away and lets them believe that he’s missing, that he’s dead, in order to keep his sister away from this world. He becomes somebody new, as he is exposed to the world of vampires, and by the time he has a chance at freedom, he is too far gone to ever reach out to her again. The only things he has left are his desire to climb the ranks of whatever group he is involved with, and his love of magic.

~X~

Without her older brother, she doesn’t have anyone. There is a ceremony held for the man who was never found and family expresses sympathy and her mother becomes even more distance, and Manami is left entirely alone. She’s never had many friends, and the few she has, she doesn’t spend much time with outside of school. This was never a problem when she had her brother around, but now the loneliness is overwhelming.

But life goes on, and she graduates high school and goes to a small college, knowing that Masashi had wanted this for her. She has a few unsuccessful relationships, and each one leaves her more distraught than the last, as they end with what feels like further abandonment. The last straw comes when she finds someone that she thinks she is making it work with, someone she dates for nearly a year and someone who she is very serious about.

When he leaves her, she is driven to commit suicide, her loneliness finally getting the better of her. She decides to do it in a group, so that she will at least not be alone in the moment of her death, and this is how she meets the man she will later learn is Izaya Orihara, the man she will later be driven to want to kill.

“I don’t believe in an afterlife,” she tells him, because she doesn’t. If there were any sort of afterlife, she thinks that her brother would have found a way to reach out to her from it. If there were anything out there, anything after, then Masashi would have found a way to cross that boundary, even if it was just to send her one small sign.

And then she finds out the whole meeting is a trick, and she’s drugged and she’s mocked, and all she can think of is how  _ this man doesn’t understand _ , he doesn’t understand anything she’s been through or anything that she’s lost. He doesn’t understand her family or her brother or the loneliness that’s threatened to eat her alive for so many years.

She vows, then and there, to make him suffer, because he just doesn’t understand.

~X~

Masashi still thinks about his little sister sometimes, even though he’s so far removed from the man he once was. Sometimes, when he performs a trick or does a show in the castle, he remembers her face in the front row, her bright eyes as she watched them. He hopes that, wherever she is now, she’s made something good of herself.

He hopes that she has a family and that they love her and that she loves them, and that she always makes time for them.


End file.
